What I've Been Eating, Part Three

AMAZING chocolate croissant from Vivian's Boulangerie!

Welcome to another edition of what South Austin Foodie has been eating recently! I continue to get carryout a couple times a week, and I try to get things where I can at least get two meals out of my order. Some home cooking, but overall it's been too hot! Here are the main highlights, please keep tabs on my Instagram, especially Stories for a more comprehensive run down of my meals!

Hey Say is a homestyle Vietnamese spot on East Oltorf; I think they're serving a few more general Asian dishes than before, but definitely look for their house specials! These are twice fried wings with a fish sauce that were really good and very different from other wings (in a good way!).

Thai Taste's spicy larb!

Molly inspects some of my first Vivian's Boulangerie croissant order.

From my second Vivian's order, beet and goat cheese kolache, brie and caramelized shallot tiger paw, cardamom snickerdoodle and salted chocolate chip cookies, and almond croissant. They've now expanded their order pickups/deliveries to FOUR days a week! (Very dangerous.) Seriously, some of the best stuff I've had. 

Steamies frozen pork char siu, pork dumplings, and beef bao. Storefront at Airport and Lamar, I will definitely be back!

Here are the Steamies dumplings, which were very good. I think the bulgogi beef bao was my favorite as it had a TON of flavor and the beef was moist. And very pleasantly surprised with the puff pastry texture and filling of the char siu triangle. 

Winebelly's chicken liver mousse is always a favorite.

My friend Curd Culture lives in Houston, but worked with local cheese shop Antonelli's and taught a cheese class via Zoom. A friend and I had the chicken liver mousse and then split this cheese board, a bottle of bubbly,  and sat socially distanced for the class. Great way to spend and evening!

Stunning chirashi bot bowl a friend got from Lucky Robot

We also split these pork belly buns  from Lucky Robot, which were crammed with stuff including pickled cauliflower which gave them a nice crunch. 

Also up there for Best Thing I Have Eaten Recently, this Vietnamese French dip sandwich from the 20Pho7 food truck at Live Oak and South First. The bread was perfect, the pho broth flavorful, the beef super tender and rare! Filled with bean sprouts, scallions, and a spicy mayo. I cannot wait to go back!

Support your local businesses and let's make sure they stay in business! What fantastic things have you been eating?

Lost Pines Yaupon Tea

Generally when we think of tea, we think of of green or black tea (or possibly even oolong or the rarer white tea) from the camellia sinensis plants that grow at higher elevations in places like China, India, and Japan. You may even think of herbal teas or tisanes, which don't have actual tea leaves in them, but other flavorful plants and herbs like peppermint or chamomile. Then there's rooibos or red tea, also not technically tea, as rooibos is a plant native to South Africa.  But just when I thought I was familiar with all the tea varietals, along comes the locally produced yaupon tea from Lost Pines. In Texas? Yaupon? 

The folks at Lost Pines Yaupon Tea reached out to me and asked if I would like to try their tea. Intrigued, I said yes! This is a sponsored post, I have not been monetarily compensated, and all opinions are my own.

Owner Jason Ellis gave me the skinny on yaupon. "Yaupon is the only plant native to the US with appreciable levels of caffeine. It's a relative of the other two South American caffeinated hollies, yerba mate and guayusa. It has a long history of being imbibed by the original inhabitants of this continent and they passed the knowledge down to the Europeans when they arrived. In addition to being caffeinated yaupon also contains theobromine, the "pleasure molecule" familiar to lovers of dark chocolate. It's also rich in antioxidants on levels comparable to superfoods like blueberries and green tea. It's also been studied for it's anti-inflammatory properties."

Whoa! I had no idea!

Furthermore, Jason says "We wild harvest all our yaupon from the Lost Pines forest of Bastrop, just 30 miles from Austin. We chop it, cure it and roast it all ourselves....I'm sure you've heard of the Bastrop Complex Fire from 2011 that burned down HUGE areas of the forest. Well, now the yaupon is growing back faster than the pine trees and putting this unique ecosystem at risk. Harvesting yaupon here actually helps the forest. Instead of buying tea from the other side of the planet from plantations that are chopping down ancient forests we could all be supporting the restoration of our own ancient local forests. Besides helping the pine trees, thinning yaupon helps the restoration of habitat for all sorts of critters, like the endangered Houston Toad." Which if you notice, the little toad is their logo. And I asked if this last round of fires at the end of October had an affect on them, and he said fortunately not.

So how do they taste??! They're good! The dark is more like a black tea and the light like a green tea. The lighter roast is a bit more vegetal; it wasn't bad, but I prefer the nuttiness and deeper notes of the dark roast. I also appreciate the lack of tannins which can make a traditional black tea bitter. Yaupon is high in antioxidants and can help fight inflammation in the body. The tea you see in the picture was brewed for about three minutes. You can use a traditional tea infuser method, a French press, or even in a pod coffee system. It can also be brewed into ice tea, but now that the Central Texas weather has finally gotten cooler, I've been enjoying it hot. Check out their website for different brewing suggestions. 

Prices start at $10.95 for 2 ounces, available online from Lost Pines. So if you're up for something different, want good antioxidants, are into supporting local business and helping our regional ecosystems, go pick up some Lost Pines Yaupon Tea!

A-OK Chinese

I visited A-OK Chinese on South Lamar last month. They opened in mid-March after several months of permit delays, and they are the only Chinese place I know of run by a couple of white guys. But guys with a long history of local restaurant connections. Chef John Bullington is an acquaintance of mine; he's the former executive chef of Mars (if you've been in ATX long enough, you'll remember Mars) and the Alamo Drafthouse. His business partner Jerry Reid has years of wine background and front of the house management. Their mission statement is clearly on the wall: to create American-style Chinese food. And what that generally means is breaded and fried pieces of cheap cuts of meat with a cloying, thick, bright orange twangy sauce. And fortunately, that's not the case here.

The quality of A-OK's ingredients is super; very fresh veggies and nice cuts of juicy meat. Where things lacked though, was in the flavor. My friend and I split the pu pu platter; the shrimp toast was good and the five-spice pork ribs were REALLY good (good flavor, good tenderness; they have these on the menu as a dish, and I'd definitely eat them again). But the wontons and dumplings seemed to suffer from dough that was chewy and too thick, and the eggroll's vegetable filling (not pictured) was a bit soggy and didn't have a lot going on.

My friend ordered the garlic pork bowl, which could have used at least three times more garlic. I had the kung pao chicken; the dinner bowl is a very nice large portion, and again everything was very fresh. Kung pao is typically characterized by peanuts and spice from chile; this dish had the peanuts, but I would have liked more of the chile flavor. It does employ some szechuan peppercorns, which can give a tingly, mouth-numbing feel when lots are used, but not in this case. The brown sauce lightly coated everything, but was not too thick or gloppy. I ate part of the bowl there, and then took the rest home for dinner, where the chile flavors did  come out a little bit more.

Aesthetically, I liked the look and feel of the space. And at mid-day, there was great natural light for taking photos! They are really good about updating their Facebook page with their daily specials, and some of the dishes have looked gorgeous. I really want this place to succeed, especially since it's in my area of town. I just think there might be some new restaurant jitters that are still being worked through, and I am hoping they can punch up the flavor components and things will iron themselves out.   As South Lamar (and all of Austin) continues to grow, we need these local small businesses to succeed.

Meet Me at the Market: Sustainable Food Center + Cocoa Puro

As a member of the Austin Food Blogger's Alliance, we've been asked to help spread the word about the Sustainable Food Center's (SFC) capital campaign and one of their farmers' market vendors. So I present to you, the SFC and Cocoa Puro!

The Sustainable Food Center (SFC) was founded in Austin in the early 1990s, as an offshoot of the Austin Community Gardens program. Their mission is to cultivate a healthy community by strengthening the local food system and improving access to nutritious, affordable food. The SFC offers opportunities for the community to learn about farming and gardening, as well as to become educated on cooking and nutrition. They also work with area farmers and growers to present several area farmers' markets, where they connect the farmers to additional urban resources. The irony of the center is they've never been an actual "center," in that they've never had a facility that people could come and visit. That's about to change with their capital campaign in full swing.

Their new facilities will offer 2.3 acres of garden plots, where approximately 70 area families will be able to grow their own food; classroom and meeting space; a teaching kitchen; greenhouse, and much more to continue to let the community grow.

Another ongoing effort of the SFC is the coordination of four area farmers' market. SFC Markets Manager Suzanne Santos says that the new permanent facility will greatly help with the coordination of the farmers' markets. They will have storage space for the items they haul to the weekly markets (water jugs for drinking water, brochures at the information booth, etc.) and farmers will be able to use the commercial kitchen to prepare their bumper crops -- turn fresh tomatoes into freshly canned tomatoes that have a much longer shelf life, but are still "made" by a particular farmer. SFC can offer classes to farmers on utilizing social media to spread the word about their products (The Carlsons of Swede Farm are an excellent example of using Facebook and Twitter to market themselves!) The meeting space will be utilized for annual farmer and vendor meetings, as well as the quarterly SFC Farmers’ Market Committee meeting.

One former SFC Advisory Council member is Cocoa Puro founder, Tom Pederson. He started experimenting with cacao beans in 1999, and in October 2004, he and his family founded the company. Their creation: Kakawa beans, an item so unique, it was named one of Saveur magazine's Top 100 food items of 2006. 

Tom takes a whole cacao bean, lightly toasts it, and enrobes it in white, milk, and dark chocolate, followed by a roll in cocoa powder. What it creates is a slightly bitter and sweet flavor combination, and as he best describes it "pure bliss."

Photo by Kent Lacin for Cocoa Puro, used with permission.

It's a labor intensive process to create the Kakawa beans, of which Toms says "It takes me four to five hours of continuous labor just to lay the chocolate layers on a batch of Kakawa Cocoa Beans. There's also considerable prep work and roasting of the beans prior to them being enrobed in chocolates. In all, it takes the better part of a day to make a batch, sometimes more. Then we bag and label them all by hand."

Tom Pederson at SFC Farmers' Market Downtown, November 2012

They've also created some other products, exclusively available at the farmers' markets, such as chocolate bars, pictured above. My absolute favorite is the dark chocolate with cayenne, cinnamon, and nibs. Cocoa Puro also has hot chocolate mix, a lip balm, and delicious caramelized cacao nibs. The original Kakawa beans are also available through their website. 

Tom was invited by Suzanne Santos to be a part of the SFC's Advisory Council, something he was part of for several years. He appreciates SFC for their support of farmers, small businesses, and artisan food makers as they are doing good work to support food security in the Austin community. Which is exactly what SFC's mission is all about. So visit the SFC's website, and consider donating to their capital campaign. We can't all give large amounts of money, but the SFC is truly a grassroots effort, so every little bit counts. 

And when you visit the farmers' markets, remember they don't just have locally grown produce. Look for Cocoa Puro and their little bites of pure bliss, and appreciate the time and effort that went into making these extraordinary products! Support local.